Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Learn how to use EcoDrug+ for target conservation analysis and environmental risk assessment.

General Information

EcoDrug+ is an advanced database designed for drug target conservation analysis and environmental risk assessment. It helps researchers map human drug targets across more than 180 environmental wildlife species to identify potential target-mediated toxicity.

Please cite our Nucleic Acids Research publication:
Ashenafi Legehar et al., EcoDrug PLUS: an advanced database for drug target conservation analysis and environmental risk assessment, Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 54, Issue D1, 2026. DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkaf1251.
Using the Platform (Case Study: Clozapine)

You can lookup compounds in the primary interface using their common name (Clozapine), CAS Registry Number (5786-21-0), or unique ChEMBL Identifier (CHEMBL42).

It uses Ensembl-derived phylogenetic comparisons to project human drug targets onto wildlife species.

Example: Searching Clozapine extracts its human pharmacological target profile—predominantly the Dopamine D2 receptor (DRD2) and Serotonin 5-HT2A receptor (HTR2A). The tool runs a sequence comparison to evaluate if these specific receptors are structurally conserved across fish, birds, or amphibians, flagging potential ecotoxicological risks.

  • default: Designed for finding hits with greater than 60% sequence identity.
  • fast: quick target alignments with close species matches (greater than 90% identity).
  • sensitive: Explores deeper evolutionary links, tracking alignments down to highly divergent twilight zones (less than 40% identity).

By feeding a chemical's SMILES representation (e.g., Clozapine: CN1CCN(C2=Nc3cc(Cl)ccc3Nc3ccccc32)CC1), users can execute Exact, Similarity (Tanimoto calculation), or Substructure matches. This scans your molecule across roughly 7.2k pharmaceuticals, 34k agrochemicals, and 61k active metabolites stored within our structural knowledge networks.
API & Developer Access

Yes. EcoDrug+ opens programmatic read access for cross-platform data pipeline integration. Developers can seamlessly pull compound identities, regulatory classifications, mechanisms of action, and pre-calculated conservation scores via standardized HTTP GET endpoints.

You can execute queries to pull real-time data matrices using Clozapine via our production REST architecture:

GET https://ecodrugplus.helsinki.fi/api/v1/data/Compounds/preferred_name/Clozapine
GET https://ecodrugplus.helsinki.fi/api/v1/data/DrugMechanism/preffred_name/Clozapine
GET https://ecodrugplus.helsinki.fi/api/v1/data/TargetConservation/organism/Homo%20sapiens/preffred_name/Clozapine